VoIP over Wi-Fi Networks: Performance Analysis and Acceleration Algorithms

The expected VoIP call capacity in a one hop IEEE 802.11b network with G.711 voice codec is about 85 simultaneous calls, but the actual observed capacity is only 5 calls even at the highest data rate and under zero loss conditions. In this paper we analyze the reasons behind this inferior performance of VoIP traffic. We also present algorithms at the medium access control layer to improve the observed call capacity. Using ns-2 based simulations, we evaluate the algorithms and show that performance improvements of more than 300% can be achieved. Finally, using a testbed implementation of one of the proposed algorithms, we show its feasibilty in real world VoIP implementations. An earlier version of this paper was published in the IEEE Conference on Broadband Communications, Networks, and Systems (BroadNets) 2007 [1]. This work was supported in part by the National Science Foundation under grants CNS-0519733 and CNS-0721296, and the Georgia Tech Broadband Institute. Yeonsik Jeong was also supported under the Korea Research Foundation Grant KRF-2005-214-D00362 funded by the Korean Government (MOEHRD). This work was performed when Y. Jeong was a research scientist in the GNAN research group at Georgia Institute of Technology.